There were a lot of people at the convenience store this morning buying coffee and breakfast and snacks. My convenience store of choice is WaWa and I prefer the one over near the air base. The coffee ladies are nice and there are always lots of interesting people to observe. Sometimes I get coffee before I go on a walk, usually when the weather is cold, so that I’ll have a nice lukewarm cup waiting for me when I’m done. Other times I get the coffee or maybe a diet green tea after I walk. There are subtle differences in the people early and late at the store. The early crowd is all business. They get the coffee, breakfast sandwich or donut and they don’t talk much, just in and out. Later in the morning people take more time. They look over the sandwich choices and chat with each other and with the workers in the store. More of them seem to be buying gas and using the ATM machine. Tradesmen on their breaks also stop in, in their vans and pickups, to get cigarettes and a lunch for later in the day.
Today I saw a couple, an older man and a young woman, buying coffee and condoms. There are two motels nearby and I imagined them heading off to their illicit assignation at the Microtel or Best Western. In the movies they’d also buy a pack of smokes. They were together but when I glanced out the window I saw them leave in separate cars. She was in a late model SUV with child seats in the back and he left in a Corvette. They did make the same left turn heading towards the area where the motels are.
A van full of Air Force people came in all dressed in their desert camo flight suits. That is a common occurrence at this store. The flight crews stop in to pick up lunch stuff that they take on their trips with them. The women at the sandwich counter box things up nicely and make sure that the orders are correct and so forth. The crews rarely talk about where they’re going or about their jobs. Usually they’re talking about sports or what business they’re going to start when they retire. But they seem pretty upbeat and positive most of the time, officers and enlisted people mingling and interacting. When I was in the service such fraternization was discouraged. But I guess on flight crews it would be different. It’s the bureaucrats that would be more inclined to make and follow rules like that. Or maybe combat soldiers who need a distinct division between the guys giving the orders to enter battle and the guys taking the orders need that non-fraternization policy. Other branches of the military are represented in the store most mornings, Army guys and girls, Marines and on rare occasions a couple of sailors. One morning a group of about ten great big muscular guys with shaved heads arrived in a van. They were wearing those tan desert uniforms and they all seemed to be made from the same mold. When I looked closely at their uniform I saw the little Navy Seal insignia pinned on their lapels. My plan to kid them about their bald heads was shelved pretty quickly. I don’t like to get beat up so early in the day.
There’s a guy who works at the store that seems pretty important but for some reason he’s always going around and cleaning stuff up, especially out in the lot. He wears one of those safety patrol vests over his WaWa shirt. Sometimes he seems to be bossing the cashiers around and the next minute he’s sweeping up cigarette butts. Maybe he has a compulsion of some kind to keep things clean. Or maybe he’s just a really bossy janitor. His hair is kind of long for management in the convenience store business, especially the big chains like this one.
I noticed a group of people coming in who were obviously not native born Americans. There were eight of them, three men and five women, and they all arrived in a Dodge Neon. The language they were speaking seemed kind of like a mixture of Italian and Polish or maybe some Eastern European variety. They were kind of olive skinned and they all had black hair. The last group of people that I saw looking and sounding like this were in one of the shopping centers and they were being arrested for shoplifting a bunch of stuff from various stores. The cop told me they were part of a Gypsy theft organization. I hate to stereotype people but I kind of watched to see if these people grabbed anything and hid the stuff in their coats. They didn’t. But they did buy the strongest, darkest coffee that the store sells. And they loaded their cups up with sugar before they poured the coffee in. Now I’ll probably assume that people with olive skin, black hair and a language I can’t recognize will all drink strong coffee full of sugar. That’s how stereotypes get started I guess.
The workers in this WaWa are mostly women and not of any particular stereotypical group. There are four younger women, two or three of middle age and two older ladies. The older ladies keep the coffee pots full and that whole area looking good. They like to chat a little and they also recognize the regular customers and know some of them by name. I’m not a frequent enough customer to get name recognition. The sandwich making ladies all talk loud and kid around a lot. They’re very efficient and they don’t get upset if there’s a big crowd of people waiting for sandwiches. The orders can really pile up as the customers enter them on the four computers next to the counter. I’m amazed that those sandwich ladies have all their fingers as fast as they slice up the meats for the hoagies. Good skills like that should be rewarded but they don’t seem to get many tips. The cashiers in this store are busy, busy, busy. There are two going all the time and there are two more putting stock up and so forth who come to the register when the line gets long. Their cash registers talk to them, telling them things like “Pump twelve twenty dollars”, “Sale complete, two dollars eighty four cents change due”. I don’t think I could work with a machine that talks to me. What if it started criticizing my performance saying things like “Hurry up, people are waiting” or “The quarters are the big silver coins, dummy”? That would be too embarrassing. If I worked there I’d have to be a coffee pot filler or an outside lot sweeper. Maybe they would hire me as a greeter like those old guys at Wal-Mart. And maybe I’d get my coffee for free. That would be cool.
Have a fine day.
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